{"id":976,"date":"2011-06-13T06:58:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T06:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saints-hosting.org.uk\/sadfish\/visitgalicia\/?p=976"},"modified":"2011-06-03T21:32:02","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T21:32:02","slug":"hell-not-see-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/?p=976","title":{"rendered":"He&#8217;ll not see Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The death of Carlos&#8217; donkey is not the end of the tale of livestock at Casa Li\u00f1eiras, for now we have a new squatter.<\/p>\n<p>I use &#8216;we&#8217; in the loosest of terms for the likelihood is that the\u00a0animal we have actually belongs to Carlos, and its detection caused a bit of a furore.<\/p>\n<p>It has now become tradition when first visiting our pile of Galician stones\u00a0to check over the inside and outside of the house and make sure that nothing had fallen off, or in, or down, and to ensure that we&#8217;ve not gained any additional redundant electrical appliances.<\/p>\n<p>Last week as we approached the property I could see that the top half of the main stable door was open, which was unusual. I entered and went to the fuse box to switch on the power so we could have light. Flipping the switches the 40 watt bulbs flickered to life to be greeted by grunting from deep in the bowels of the house. Alarm bells immediately started to ring.<\/p>\n<p>I shouted to Amanda <em>&#8216;there&#8217;s something in here&#8217; <\/em>and followed the sounds down into the old animal pens area of the house, with some trepidation.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_978\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pigpen1.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-978\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-978\" title=\"pigpen\" src=\"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pigpen1-300x233.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"233\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pigpen1-300x233.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pigpen1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-978\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deep in the Bowels of Casa Li\u00f1eiras<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As I got closer the noises got louder and then within one of the animal pens I got my first site of our new resident, a big pink pig, who we&#8217;ve not named for fear of developing\u00a0some kind of\u00a0bond, knowing full well what his fate will be in a few months time.<\/p>\n<p>The pig thought it was food time, and was going crackers, grunting and snorting and trying to jump up to say hello, managing to get his trotters (are they called that when the animal is alive?) about an inch off the floor with each attempt.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1007\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pig1.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1007\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1007\" title=\"pig\" src=\"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pig1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pig1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/pig1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1007\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Our new resident<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The immediate, and very English,\u00a0reaction was to find Carlos and insist that he remove his pig from our property, but after calming down for a few minutes we came to the conclusion that he was doing no harm, and that it would cause more problems and bad feeling to get him removed than was to leave him be.<\/p>\n<p>After our discovery we mentioned our lodger to several people we\u00a0encountered on the rest of the trip. With the exception of our English neighbour David, who was aghast\u00a0like us, the reaction was a dismissive smile or a giggle. <em>&#8216;It is the Galician way&#8217;<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, we all know where this pig is going to end up, and probably in the not too distant future. Maybe Carlos will thank us for his use of our house with some nice smoked paprika seasoned <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chorizo\">chorizo<\/a>. One thing is for sure,\u00a0&#8216;Babe&#8217; will not see Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>Dammit, I&#8217;ve given him a name!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The death of Carlos&#8217; donkey is not the end of the tale of livestock at Casa Li\u00f1eiras, for now we have a new squatter. I use &#8216;we&#8217; in the loosest of terms for the likelihood is that the\u00a0animal we have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/?p=976\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31],"tags":[33,53,18,21,34,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1015,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/1015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}